Daniel 4:19

"Then Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was stricken dumb for awhile, and his thoughts troubled him. The king answered and said, Belteshazzar, let not the dream, or the interpretation trouble thee. Belteshazzar answered and said, My lord, the dream be to them that hate thee, and the interpretation thereof to thine adversaries. The tree that thou sawest, which grew, and was strong, whose height reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to all the earth; whose leaves were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and it was for food for all; under which the beasts of the field dwelt, and upon whose branches the birds of the heavens had their habitation: it is thou, O king, that art grown and become strong; for thy greatness is grown, and reacheth unto heaven, and thy dominion to the end of the earth. And whereas the king saw a watcher and a holy one coming down from heaven, and saying, Hew down the tree, and destroy it; nevertheless leave the stump of the roots thereof in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven; and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven times pass over. him; this is the interpretation, O king, and it is the decree of the Most High, which is come upon my lord the king: that thou shalt be driven from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and thou shalt be made to eat grass as oxen, and shall be wet with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee; till thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will. And whereas they commanded to leave the stump of the roots of the tree; thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, after that thou shall have known that the heavens do rule."

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE DREAM

The king's edict here used both the Hebrew name and the Babylonian name of Daniel; and critics seize this as a grounds for destructive remarks; but, on the other hand, this use of both names is exactly what should have been expected.

"So far from being an objection, it is an undesigned mark of genuineness. In a decree to 'all peoples' and one designed to honor the God of the Hebrews, Nebuchadnezzar would naturally have used the Hebrew name (derived from [~'El], God), the name by which the prophet was best known among his own countrymen."[28]

Of special interest is the evidence of mutual love and respect between Daniel and the king in Daniel 4:19. This attitude of the principal characters here is proof that no writer in the days of Antiochus had anything to do with the composition of the prophecy of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar in this passage is so utterly unlike Antiochus Epiphanes that it must ever remain a mystery why critical scholars are always mentioning Antiochus and the need of the people for encouragement in those times, as being pertinent in any manner whatever to this prophecy.

We have already noted that Daniel 4:24,25 were designed to correct the king's notion about the source of the decree against him. It did not come from angels, but from God.

"Thou shalt be driven from men ..." The description here of the king's condition during the days of his punishment should not be pressed as to details. They have the general meaning that, "The king would be in such a state as to be treated like a beast; he would be removed from his ordinary abode, and become a miserable and neglected outcast."[29]

The nature of the king's strange malady is readily identified by a number of writers as "lycanthropy,"[30] a strange form of insanity in which the victim imagines that he is a beast and adopts a form of behavior appropriate to such a delusion. A dissenting view was quoted by Thomson from a famed British medical doctor, David Yellowlees, of the University of Glasgow:

"Nebuchadnezzar's illness was not lycanthropy; it was an attack of acute mania, from which he likely recovered, as usually in such attacks, if uncomplicated, in seven months. In its extreme form, acute mania causes victims to exhibit all kinds of degraded habits such as stripping or tearing of clothes, eating filth and garbage of all sorts, wild and violent gesticulations, dangerous assaults, howling noises, and utter disregard of personal decency."[31]

This quotation has been included here not from any personal acceptance of it as true, but as a matter of general interest. Our own viewpoint is that, since the visitation upon Nebuchadnezzar was a heaven sent punishment, it might not have been any particular disease with which men are familiar. We simply do not know what it was.

Whatever was the length of time that Nebuchadnezzar was deprived of his throne, the government of Babylon would have been taken care of by a regent. Adam Clarke gives us the name of that regent. "Evil-merodach his son was regent during his father's insanity."[32]

The destructive critics gleefully remark that, "The silence of the inscriptions is inexplicable!"[33] Such a remark is based on the fact that none of the monuments or inscriptions uncovered from the mud of Mesopotamia have any report of king Nebuchadnezzar's terrible malady. Apparently critics know nothing at all of human rulers. Do they suppose that Senator Ted Kennedy would have a monument erected to his escapade at Chappaquiddick? or that President John Kennedy would have memorialized his sexual escapades in the White House?

How can anyone on earth suppose that Nebuchadnezzar would have erected a monument to his status while in the throes of that awful malady? Despite that, however, the king did publish the decree which we have before us in the historic Book of Daniel; and this writer believes, along with a great many other conservative scholars, that the discoveries in the ancient Babylonian area my yet reveal a copy of this very decree. But if and when that should happen, the enemies of the Word would not stop denying it.

"Thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, after that thou shall have known that the heavens do rule" (Daniel 4:26). "Heaven rules is the oldest surrogate for God in the Bible. It was widely used later, as in Luke 15:18."[34] Note that the plural is used here, "the heavens do rule." In fact the kingdom of heaven as written in the Greek New Testament is actually, "The royal majesty of the heavens has approached"[35] (Matthew 3:2).